[qwerty49]

I mean, it's not just the powers that be that find the current landscape just a bit too much. Plenty of us who gleefully attended Rose Bowls in recent years and delight in our success also find a lot of this a bridge too far. And yes, I also think players should have NIL rights. But the way it's been done has cheapened the game, and I guess I can't be mad at our administration and/or donors for not hitting SEC-type NIL heights. It just all feels a bit gross. 

I will forever be furious at how the NCAA screwed all of this up. It has always been problematic that schools were pocketing tens of millions while players got only their scholarships. But solving that problem didn't have to mean blowing up the whole damn system. It was the NCAA's intransigence that led us all here. A little forethought, a little trying to get ahead of the curve--and perhaps we'd have a more sustainable model. 

We're well past it now, but my idea was always to take some of that revenue each year and plunk it into a retirement account for all the players. And you could have made some allowances for the Johnny Manziel types who transcended the sport by putting a lot more into their accounts. Or you eat the cost of adding these players to your employee health insurance plans--and you keep them on there for a number of years or for the rest of their lives, depending on the injury risk they faced in their particular sport (for football and other sports with a lot of concussive and sub-concussive impacts, I'd want lifelong health insurance). You could also provide free tuition for student-athletes who have exhausted eligibility to get a graduate degree at your school. Or even just an annuity that would pay dividends starting at age 25 or something. There were always smarter ways of doing this, but schools and the NCAA resisted until the courts forced them to change. And now we're left with the grossest, most transactional version of this brave, new world. 

Maybe it  was always going to end up this way. But we could have at least tried something that channeled that extra revenue into a more sustainable path forward.

 

Well put.
Reality: How much longer can Stanford stomach being the doormat of a Power Four conference while its fading fan-base circles the drain? Nothing "sustainable" there.

A very good question and one I think can only be answered "not long".  As I see it, if you want to be in the top 20 now days you need roughly 44 4 star guys if you want to be in the top ten.  In todays world, I do not see Stanford ever having 22 4 stars on its roster.  Just won't happen because we will not pay for it, or can't pay for it. 
For other sports the picture is different.  In BB I think one can make a run at the top with far less talent across the board.  A one and one or 2 another 4 star and you are going to do well.  I think the same applies to other sports as well,  in football do I see us being always on the outside looking in.

An excellent point. It’s way easier for, say, Duke to recruit 4 or 5 top hoopsters and be in the run for national contention than it is for them to find 25 or 30 great HS FB players.

So sure, we could become a power in a sport with less formidable numbers.

But I think the new math boils down to TV money, and I think that’s overwhelmingly from FB.

[qwerty49]

I mean, it's not just the powers that be that find the current landscape just a bit too much. Plenty of us who gleefully attended Rose Bowls in recent years and delight in our success also find a lot of this a bridge too far. And yes, I also think players should have NIL rights. But the way it's been done has cheapened the game, and I guess I can't be mad at our administration and/or donors for not hitting SEC-type NIL heights. It just all feels a bit gross. 

I will forever be furious at how the NCAA screwed all of this up. It has always been problematic that schools were pocketing tens of millions while players got only their scholarships. But solving that problem didn't have to mean blowing up the whole damn system. It was the NCAA's intransigence that led us all here. A little forethought, a little trying to get ahead of the curve--and perhaps we'd have a more sustainable model. 

We're well past it now, but my idea was always to take some of that revenue each year and plunk it into a retirement account for all the players. And you could have made some allowances for the Johnny Manziel types who transcended the sport by putting a lot more into their accounts. Or you eat the cost of adding these players to your employee health insurance plans--and you keep them on there for a number of years or for the rest of their lives, depending on the injury risk they faced in their particular sport (for football and other sports with a lot of concussive and sub-concussive impacts, I'd want lifelong health insurance). You could also provide free tuition for student-athletes who have exhausted eligibility to get a graduate degree at your school. Or even just an annuity that would pay dividends starting at age 25 or something. There were always smarter ways of doing this, but schools and the NCAA resisted until the courts forced them to change. And now we're left with the grossest, most transactional version of this brave, new world. 

Maybe it  was always going to end up this way. But we could have at least tried something that channeled that extra revenue into a more sustainable path forward.

 

Well put.
Reality: How much longer can Stanford stomach being the doormat of a Power Four conference while its fading fan-base circles the drain? Nothing "sustainable" there.

A very good question and one I think can only be answered "not long".  As I see it, if you want to be in the top 20 now days you need roughly 44 4 star guys if you want to be in the top ten.  In todays world, I do not see Stanford ever having 22 4 stars on its roster.  Just won't happen because we will not pay for it, or can't pay for it. 
For other sports the picture is different.  In BB I think one can make a run at the top with far less talent across the board.  A one and one or 2 another 4 star and you are going to do well.  I think the same applies to other sports as well,  in football do I see us being always on the outside looking in.

An excellent point. It’s way easier for, say, Duke to recruit 4 or 5 top hoopsters and be in the run for national contention than it is for them to find 25 or 30 great HS FB players.

So sure, we could become a power in a sport with less formidable numbers.

But I think the new math boils down to TV money, and I think that’s overwhelmingly from FB.